Forgotten Railways Volume 5 Scotland

Forgotten Railways Volume 5 Scotland

Forgotten Railways series

by John Thomas

With large area of minimal population Scotland has more than its fair share of forgotten lines, not only cross-country and branch routes built to link distant towns and villages, which today (1983) will not even support a bus service, but also one time main lines and lines originally independent but later swallowed into the larger concerns. John Thomas has delved far and wide to unearth not only fact but so much more of the character and background to make a railway history come to life.

Of the unusual he records a railway that hoisted sails on one of its carriages when the wind was right, and another where the village cobbler was also the signalman and carried on both trades together with official sanction! He has unearthed records of Thomas Bouch's railway engineering activities 30 years before the Tay Bridge disaster, and discusses unfamiliar aspects of some of the major lines.

Rather than compress the story of every forgotten line which would result in little more than brief facts and figures, John Thomas has woven into a narrative evocative memories of life of a forgotten era, not only of the railways themselves, but the ares they served. A gazetteer list sites of extant sections of line, buildings and other relics, and recent changes to other uses. Explorers, actual and armchair, will find much of absorbing interest.